🔗 Share this article

Over the weekend, Battlefield Studios launched a new playlist called Casual Breakthrough. To put it simply, this mode resembles the regular Breakthrough setup but features several key adjustments:

• Every squad has only eight human participants, with the remaining made up of 32 bots.
• Actions performed by human gamers grant full XP, while bot actions offer reduced XP.
• Only two locations can be played: Cairo Siege and Empire State.
• Features like Player tags, achievements, and career stat updates have been turned off.

In short, the playlist delivers on its name: it's a casual version of Breakthrough. At face value, you might think there's nothing wrong, as it gives additional choices for gamers looking for alternative methods to have fun with the title. However, gaming history has shown one thing, it is that not everyone will be happy. In other words, many BF6 fans are mad.

Player Responses: Anger to Praise

"Gamers prefer human opponents. Don't repeat the errors of your competitors," states one reply to the mode reveal. "Absolutely shocking concept," comments another. At the same time, on the Battlefield subreddit, one user remarks, "I have no idea where we are headed with this game," and another lists everything they consider to be broken in the game: "Resolve glitches, fix drone glitch, fix IVF rockets, adjust aiming after sprinting, improve hit detection. We do not require this bot mode."

On the other hand, for every complaint, some gamers sharing how much they're liking the new mode. "It's enjoyable to practice, human participants prevent it from being a total farmfest but it's quite laid-back," reads a forum post. "This subreddit doesn't understand that there are players who actually go outside and don't play this title 24/7. Allow them to find a middle ground," adds a different comment. One reply via social media explains that as they're "a battledad with busy schedules, this is great for me," while another praises the mode for "not being overcompetitive."

Constructive Concerns and Community Input

All that said, there are valid points to complain about the new mode. A few folks have pointed out that it could increase wait times even longer for different playlists because of the large amount of playlists in the game already. On a similar note, some areas already encounter mostly bots in the current modes. Additionally, it appears somewhat counterintuitive that the mode won't start without a minimum number of real players, even though it primarily centers on fighting AI opponents.

Finally, one of the biggest complaints is that a previous feature was promised to offer complete rewards, including AI matches, but that got canned when they tried to remove bot farms from the system. So this new playlist seems like the player base compromising halfway, as per a Reddit comment. A different user describes this addition as the devs "making a mistake so hard, I had great enjoyment in the initial release, why did they feel the need to adjust it?"

Looking Ahead: Adjustments Be Made?

If Battlefield Studios has demonstrated something to date with Battlefield 6, it is that they're listening and acting on feedback. Assignments that were overly hard got fixed rapidly, as did the required Redsec challenges. It is likely that, if their data indicates this recent mode is underperforming to their expectations, they will not hesitate to make further modifications.